Centre Block
The Centre Block is the main building of the Canadian parliamentary complex on Parliament Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario, containing the House of Commons and Senate chambers, as well as the offices of a number of members of parliament, senators, and senior administration for both legislative houses. It is also the location of several ceremonial spaces, such as the Hall of Honour, the Memorial Chamber, and Confederation Hall.
Built in the Gothic Revival style, the present Centre Block is the building's second iteration. The first was destroyed by fire in 1916; all that remains of the original building is the Library of Parliament, at the rear of the Centre Block. Though construction began immediately after the blaze, sculpting work on the interior continued through the 1970s. Then, from 2018, MPs were moved elsewhere for renovations lasting until 2031.
One of the most recognizable buildings in Canada, the Centre Block is depicted on the Canadian $10 bill, $20 bill, and the $50 bill.
Characteristics
Designed by and John A. Pearson, the Centre Block is a symmetrical structure, long by deep, and six storeys high, built in the modern Gothic Revival style. As such, it displays a multitude of stone carvings, including gargoyles, grotesques, and friezes, keeping with the Victorian High Gothic style of the rest of the parliamentary complex. The walls are faced with more than 50,000 blocks of over 24 different types of stone, though a rustic finished Nepean sandstone is the predominant kind of masonry, with dressed stone trim around the 550 windows and other edges. The roof is of reinforced concrete covered with copper, and dotted with dormer windows. The interior walls are sheeted with Tyndall stone, a dolomitic limestone quarried in southeastern Manitoba and chosen by the architect for the richness of its vibrant colour and rich pattern formed by darker brown spots which are fossilized shallow marine mud burrows. These surfaces are augmented by sculptural decoration done in Indiana limestone.The Centre Block houses offices and facilities, including the office of the Prime Minister, that of the Leader of the Official Opposition, and the offices of other party leaders, as well as senators, ministers, and Commons staff. Further, there are numerous parliamentary committee rooms and the Parliamentary Press Gallery.
Confederation Hall
The Centre Block is arranged symmetrically around Confederation Hall, located immediately inside the main entrance. It is an octagonal chamber, the perimeter of which is divided by limestone clustered columns into eight bays of two different sizes, themselves subdivided by dark green syenite pillars. Behind these runs a vaulted ambulatory that supports the upper gallery. The arcaded arches are topped by gables sculpted to commemorate the confederated nature of Canada and they support one side of the hall's fan vaulted ceiling with carved bosses, while the other side rests on a single column in the centre of the room. This column is borne on a stone carved with an image of Neptune amongst sea lions and fish in a mythical sea. It was placed at noon on 2 July 1917, to mark the 50th anniversary of Confederation, and above it was carved the words:Around the central column is an inlaid marble floor with a 16-point windrose of Verde Antique serpentine from Roxbury, Vermont, and a swirl pattern of green serpentine from the Greek island of Tinos, embedded in Missisquoi Boulder Grey marble, from Philipsburg, Quebec. The overall pattern represents the essential element of water, alluding to Canada's motto: a mari usque ad mare. The inner and outer circles of the floor are made of a Missisquoi Black marble from Philipsburg, Quebec, and white travertine from Italy, as well as Verde Antique serpentine separated by a band of Missisquoi Boulder Grey marble.
File:Ottawa - Parliament Hill - Centre Block 10.JPG|thumb|The rotunda's tympanum adorned with the coat of arms of Ontario, Canada, and coat of arms of Quebec.
Though a design model of the room was presented as early as January 1918, Confederation Hall was the last part of the Centre Block's interior to be completed; the Missisquoi black marble base was laid on 11 August 1921 and the Tyndall limestone vault—built from a full scale wood and plaster model—was completed in December of the following year. Still, the detailed carving, the designs for which had been finalized by Cléophas Soucy in 1941, remained incomplete until 1953, due to occurrence of the Second World War. Upon completion of this work, the tympanums were adorned with the coats of arms of Canada and the provinces, each surrounded by relevant floral symbols: on the east wall thistles for Nova Scotia, Tudor roses for Prince Edward Island, and grapes and apples for New Brunswick; on the south wall lilies, maple leaves, and Tudor roses for Newfoundland and Labrador, pine cones, oak leaves, and acorns for Nunavut, and maple leaves for British Columbia; on the west wall grapevines and apples for Saskatchewan, sunflowers, corn, and wheat for Alberta, and wheat and pine cones for Manitoba; and on the west wall sunflowers, wheat, and corn for Ontario, pine cones, oak leaves, and acorns for Canada, and Tudor roses for Quebec. The remaining territorial coats of arms are located in the southeast and southwest corners. The gable springers all display the coats of arms of the provincial and territorial capitals, while the gable ramparts bear symbols of Canada's fauna.
The apex stones atop each central arch are carved into figures from Canadian life, two Inuit with huskies being found on the east wall, two heads each representing the merchant marine and agriculture on the south wall, two of Canada's First Nations people on the west wall, and a lumberjack and miner with a wheel of industry on the north wall. There were originally two renditions of the sovereign's Canadian arms, one each on the north and south walls of Confederation Hall; however, the latter was reworked in 2000 by Maurice Joanisse into the above-mentioned coat of arms of the newly created territory of Nunavut.
Hall of Honour
Extending from Confederation Hall is the Centre Block's north to south axis, running between the Library of Parliament and the Peace Tower, through the Hall of Honour, which serves as the route of the parades for both speakers of parliament, as well as where the lying in state segment of some state funerals takes place. It is a long, rib-vaulted space of Tyndall limestone divided into five bays by superimposed double arcades of lancet arches atop clustered columns on pedestals. These bays are subdivided in half by single-storey pointed arches on dark green syenite pillars, above which sit clerestory windows of cusped lights segmented by Missisquoi Black marble posts, though only those on the east of the hall are windows, while the others are blind.Running the length of the hall and resting on corbels carved into early English foliage and other customary symbols, is a ribbed vault ceiling rising to bosses carved with Tudor roses and fleurs-de-lis. The hall is bisected by small, vaulted corridors, the east one leading to a committee room, and the west to the old reading room; the latter is known as the Correspondents' Entrance, as it is lined with bosses and label stops sculpted by Cléophas Soucy between 1949 and 1950 into the visages of ten notable parliamentary correspondents: Charles Bishop, Henri Bourassa, John Wesley Dafoe, Joseph Howe, Grattan O'Leary, Frank Oliver, John Ross Robertson, Philip Dansken Ross, Joseph Israël Tarte, and Robert S. White.
The north end of the hall is crossed on both levels by the Centre Block's north corridor, with an overlooking gallery lined by iron railings by Paul Beau. The Hall of Honour was intended to be a gallery where statues of notable Canadians would be arranged in the niches along each side. That plan was later abandoned in favour of a more general purpose of commemorating the 1916 fire, as well as honouring those who participated in the Great War. The sculptures remain incomplete; only the north end, closest to the Library of Parliament, has completed carvings. The largest of these stone sculptures is a low relief memorial to nursing in Canada, depicting those care-givers who participated in World War I, while another work, Canada Remembers, pays tribute to those who were involved in the Second World War. Two other pieces mark the efforts of early nation-building, such as that donated by Canadians living in the United States and which celebrates the 60th anniversary of Confederation.
Senate Chamber
In Centre Block's east wing is the Senate chamber, in which are the thrones for the Canadian monarch and his consort, or for the federal viceroy and his or her consort, and from which the sovereign or the governor general gives the Speech from the Throne and grants royal assent to bills passed by Parliament. The senators in the chamber who belong to the governing party sit to the speaker of the Senate's right and the opposition sit to the speaker's left. On the centre table sits the Diamond Jubilee Calendar, paid for by donations from senators and commissioned to mark the 60th anniversary of Elizabeth II's accession as Queen of Canada, it displays symbols chosen to depict the evolution of the French and British Crowns into that of Canada.File:Senate ceiling.jpg|thumb|The gilded and painted coffers of the Senate chamber ceiling
The Senate chamber's overall colour is red, seen in the upholstery, carpeting, and draperies, and reflecting the colour scheme of the House of Lords in the United Kingdom; red was a more royal colour, associated with the Crown and hereditary peers. Capping the room is a gilt ceiling with deep octagonal coffers, each filled with heraldic symbols, including maple leaves, fleurs-de-lis, lions rampant, clàrsach, Welsh Dragons, and lions passant. This plane rests on six pairs and four single pilasters, each of which is capped by a caryatid, and between which are clerestory windows. Below the windows is a continuous architrave, broken only by baldachins at the base of each of the above pilasters.
On the chamber's east and west walls are eight murals depicting scenes from the First World War. Painted in between 1916 and 1920, they were originally part of the more than 1,000 piece Canadian War Memorials Fund, founded by the Lord Beaverbrook, and were intended to hang in a specific memorial structure. But the project was never completed and the works were stored at the National Gallery of Canada until, in 1921, parliament requested some of the collection's oil paintings on loan for display in the Centre Block. The murals have remained in the Senate chamber ever since.
Edgar Bundy's Landing of the First Canadian Division at Saint-Nazaire, 1915, depicts the first landing of Canadian troops in France, at Saint-Nazaire, led off the Novian by the pipe band of the 13th Battalion, CEF, and watched by officers, troops, and townspeople. Algernon Talmage painted A Mobile Veterinary Unit in France, showing a scene on the Cambrai front, where a Canadian Mobile Veterinary Unit is taking wounded horses to an evacuating station. Railway Construction in France was painted by Leonard Richmond to show the construction of a railway by the Canadian Overseas Railway Construction Corps in the deepest trench in France. James Kerr-Lawson was commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Fund to create both Arras, the Dead City—which depicts the ruins of Arras Cathedral as they were in 1917—and The Cloth Hall, Ypres, a painting of the destroyed, 600-year-old Cloth Hall in Ypres. Claire Atwood's On Leave documents the home front activities of the Canadian Expeditionary Force at a YMCA canteen in one of London's train stations as they await their train to the battlefront. The Watch on the Rhine was painted by Sir William Rothenstein to symbolically represent the defeat of Germany, with a British howitzer facing across the Rhine, and old and new Germany embodied in the ancient hills and factory chimney. And Sir George Clausen's Returning to the Reconquered Land was painted to illustrate agricultural land behind the front lines in France and shows people returning to their destroyed homes following the armistice.